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After starting the year with a big January, most investors are taking February's modest declines in stride and the last week was no exception.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.1% over five days, while the S&P 500 managed a 0.1% gain and the Nasdaq slipped 0.1%.

Early in the week there was big news on the Dell buyout. T. Rowe Price joined a growing chorus of shareholders who think founder Michael Dell and his private equity backers at Silver Lake are getting the PC-maker too cheap:

‘We believe the proposed buyout does not reflect the value of Dell, and we do not intend to support the offer as put forward,’ says Brian Rogers, T. Rowe Price Chairman and CIO.

T. Rowe joins Southeastern Asset Management, Dell’s largest outside investor who criticized the deal as too cheaply priced, and said other proposals would be better for shareholders.

From billionaire-backed buyout to another, the proposed takeover of Dell was replaced in the headlines Thursday by news that ketchup-maker HJ Heinz will be taken private by Warren Buffett and 3G Capital:

Buffett’s investment firm and 3G Partners will pay $72.50 in cash, or $23.2 billion, to acquire Heinz, a 20% premium to Wednesday’s closing price, in a transaction backed in part by debt financing from JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

While Buffett and the trio of Brazilian billionaires behind 3G – Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Hermann Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira – drew the market’s attention Thursday morning, that spotlight shifted to Carl Icahn at day’s end thanks to his disclosure of a a stake in Herbalife equal to 13% of the embattled company’s shares.

Icahn, who had an epic television spat with Bill Ackman over the latter’s massive short position in Herbalife last month, stressed Friday that his investment was not based on wanting to hurt Ackman. But still, even he couldn’t deny that squeezing the short seller is “the strawberry on top of the ice cream”:

“I can’t say if Ackman gets squeezed I’ll feel very sorry and go cry and do penance, but I’m doing this to make money, that’s what I do,” he added, though he refused to go into much detail regarding the work his team has done to give him such confidence in Herbalife.

Icahn also suggested the Herbalife could make for an buyout target, and if so it would be in keeping with a recent upswing in deal activity. Aside from Buffett’s Heinz buy, the week also featured the $11 billion marriage in the sky of bankrupt American Airlines parent AMR and US Airways Group:

It works to widen American’s presence in the Lower 48, especially in the Northeast, and it creates a airline that can take on United Airlines and Delta Air Lines. (Worth noting: United and Delta grew rapidly in recent years from deals and mergers just like this. Delta getting hitched to Northwest Airlines, United to Continental.) All told, the new American will have more than 100 million frequent fliers, with more 6,700 daily flights to more than 50 countries.

M&A is just one potential use for the billions in cash sitting on corporate balance sheets, and more companies are heeding the call of investors who want a piece of that action. While Apple is not giving in to David Einhorn’s call for it to unlock value by issuing preferred shares, both General Electric and Comcast committed big sums to share repurchases after finalizing a $16.7 billion deal for the latter to acquire the remainder of NBCUniversal:

Shelling out billions for an acquisition would be an easy excuse for Comcast to cool its heels on capital return for a time or even pull back. Instead, the company’s board authorized management to repurchase $2 billion of the company’s stock and raised the dividend 20% to 19.5 cents.

The coming week -- which starts a day late with the market closed Monday for Washington's Birthday -- brings the last big blitz of earnings season: the retailers.

Wal-Mart Stores will be in focus, after Bloomberg reported Friday on an executive's e-mail warning that month-to-date February sales were "a total disaster." The retail giant is due to report quarterly results Thursday, Feb. 21.